Virgin Media BQM Graph - Advice please..

Hi,

I am new to these tools and have about 3 months back made the switch to VM 100mbps Fibre Optic connection. I have been experiencing very bad gameplay on my PS4 and lots of sluggish behaviour which prompted me to do a BQM.

I have left it on for 36 hours now and I think it doesn't look great - but wonder if a more experienced person can verify I am not reading it wrong?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/a832c6cf711...

I am becoming really frustrated with this connection and have a Superhub 3.0 in modem mode with a TP-Link W-9980 router hard wired in to the PS4.

What frustrates me is that the Internet connection wasn't even in use all day yesterday and it still shows continuous yellow spikes constantly. It mainly gets used in the evening from 8pm to about 12am (at the absolute maximum).

Would be grateful for some advice as to what to do or the case to mount with my ISP to help resolve this please?

Many Thanks.

Edited by Squibbles (Fri 16-Dec-16 11:08:52)

Dreadful, as you say.

However, if you read the write-up, each plot on the graph represents the pings for 100 seconds. To me the blue (average) band would be much deeper if the latency was bad for most of those seconds.

Has the bad gameplay and sluggishness been there ever since you switched to Virgin, or is it only since you or a neighbour turned on a Christmas lights? Though those aren't usually on in the day. Maybe Christmas Tree lights are.

Thank You for the response.

In layman's terms, what is the 'latency' or the yellow spikes representative of?

I think it has been there ever since I switched to Virgin though I do recall in the very first week it seemed to be okay and the game was playable.. but I have only just found out about this BQM so don't have any 'evidence' or 'comparison' to compare against with a before or after and my memory is a bit hazy.

There is however about 9-10 doors down a house that is covered in Christmas lights, but It is pretty far away.

Something else I forgot to mention, I do have a Power Line adapter plugged in to the router but that is not in use until 8pm to about 10:30pm. Don't know if that affects the results.

I would appreciate any advice you may be able to provide.

Thank You.

Edited by Squibbles (Fri 16-Dec-16 12:00:22)

Latency is the posh name for ping time, if you know what a ping is. Basically it's the time for a very small piece of data to be sent out, just requesting a reply that it was received.

So once a second (for the BQM) thinkbroadband sends a ping to your router and your router says "you pinged me". Then each 100 of those gives one vertical line on the graph showing the minimum, average and peak over those 100 seconds.

Once you know how you can run pings from your computer to nearly anywhere. For instance I just did this:-

C:\Users\Bob>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.244.22] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.244.22: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.22: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.22: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.22: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 212.58.244.22:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 14ms, Maximum = 15ms, Average = 14ms

So a ping from my computer to the BBC took 15 milliseconds to get an acknowledgement.

Do you know how to access your router's control interface (GUI)? That probably has a Diagnostics section that will let you ping the BBC. If you are using a Windows computer it is easier to do it direct from that once we tell you how. I think the same can be done from an Apple computer but don't know how.

Ah, explaining ping and I forgot the powerline adapter.

Try for a few minutes unplugging all of those. Not just the one by the router. If they are on sockets that have a switch, switching the sockets off will do.

Hi

Yes, that makes sense, I know what 'ping' is - I was just confused about 'latency' as I thought it means something else than 'this is how long it took said PC to receive a response from a request'.

I know how to do a ping. This will sound silly but this connection is really depressing me as I work long hours and just want to be able to play a game (FIFA 17) without any issues to unwind.

I am using a TP Link TD-W9980 - and a Superhub 3.0 connected in Modem mode. Not sure if my router make - causes an issue but it worked great before?

I have done a ping to different sites and here is the results:

C:\>ping www.bbc.co.uk

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.71] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.244.71: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=50
Reply from 212.58.244.71: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=50
Reply from 212.58.244.71: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=50
Reply from 212.58.244.71: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=50

Ping statistics for 212.58.244.71:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 23ms, Maximum = 25ms, Average = 23ms

C:\>ping www.google.co.uk

Pinging www.google.co.uk [62.253.72.183] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 62.253.72.183: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=59
Reply from 62.253.72.183: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=59
Reply from 62.253.72.183: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=59
Reply from 62.253.72.183: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=59

Ping statistics for 62.253.72.183:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 12ms

C:\>ping www.sky.com

Pinging e1264.g.akamaiedge.net [104.103.115.58] with 32 bytes of da
Reply from 104.103.115.58: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=58
Reply from 104.103.115.58: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=58
Reply from 104.103.115.58: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=58
Reply from 104.103.115.58: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 104.103.115.58:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 17ms, Average = 14ms

Both Powerline adapters were switched off when I took the pings. The upstairs is switched off at night and I took all the Ethernet cables out including the powerline adapter by the router and turned it off about 50 minutes ago.

The BQM still shows the high latency when the powerlines were switched off? It needs a few minutes to be sure, say 3-4 minutes.

Hi Roberto,

That's correct - The graph hasn't changed. It is exactly the same.

Here is a fresh link to it after I unplugged everything and had turned the Powerline Adapters off (which are always off anyway until the evening around and turned on around 9pm).

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/a832c6cf711...

Is there a router setting that is likely to be affecting the high ping do you think?

I have done a couple of more pings:


C:\>ping www.amazon.com

Pinging opf-www.amazon.com [54.239.25.208] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 54.239.25.208: bytes=32 time=165ms TTL=228
Reply from 54.239.25.208: bytes=32 time=115ms TTL=228
Reply from 54.239.25.208: bytes=32 time=118ms TTL=228
Reply from 54.239.25.208: bytes=32 time=119ms TTL=228

Ping statistics for 54.239.25.208:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 115ms, Maximum = 165ms, Average = 129ms

C:\>ping www.yahoo.co.uk

Pinging src.g03.yahoodns.net [77.238.184.150] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 77.238.184.150: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=52
Reply from 77.238.184.150: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=52
Reply from 77.238.184.150: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=52
Reply from 77.238.184.150: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 77.238.184.150:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 25ms, Maximum = 30ms, Average = 27ms

Your standard pings aren't that bad. What you probably need to do is add a -t to a ping (ie ping www.bbc.co.uk -t). This will run ping then until you stop it (with ctrl-c). By doing that you can then see how often you are getting spiked pings - those are what is showing up in yellow.